11th May 2017, by Dr. Daniel Leidner

METERON SUPVIS Justin cleared the European Sim checkout

METERON SUPVIS Justin cleared another major milestone last week to bring our mission to prime time on board the ISS by successfully completed the mission European Sim checkout. The checkout verified our system functional readiness for ISS-Ground experiment. This was carried out with four parties simultaneously: the European Astronaut Centre (EAC), Danish Aerospace, German Space Operations Center (GSOC)/Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC) and the DLR Robotics and Mechatronics Center.

The SIM checkout was the first full test run of the actual experiment with the full experiment procedure and infrastructure. We carried out a complete communication infrastructure system test and verification, including voice loop communication, and the data link between Justin on earth and the tablet GUI on the astronaut side.

We also made a full run of the ISS on board hardware setup, system startup procedures by the astronaut trainer at EAC. This will be the same procedure the astronaut will use to startup SUPVIS Justin.

To conclude the European Sim, we conducted the full baseline SUPVIS Justin experiment protocol, with the astronaut trainer at EAC teleoperating Justin with Supervised Autonomy through the complete set of survey, navigation, service, and repair tasks we designed.